


a story does not unwind

by agletmaybe (agletbaby)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Final Haikyuu Quest, Gen, also feat. the kids who trained with ukai senior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:54:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26560222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agletbaby/pseuds/agletmaybe
Summary: Ushijima and Oikawa are becoming legends. Nowhere nearby, Semi's helping them along.
Relationships: Oikawa Tooru & Ushijima Wakatoshi
Kudos: 8





	a story does not unwind

**Author's Note:**

> “And if you want the story, then remember that a story does not unwind. It weaves. Events that start in different places and different times all bear down on that one tiny point in space-time, which is the perfect moment."
> 
>   
> _Thief of Time_ , Terry Pratchett

Semi is an affable presence, a good-humoured gossip, an always ready host. He doesn’t keep secrets about himself, not if asked directly, and he hasn’t given anyone a reason to think he would. And yet he remains an endless source of speculation around the village, whose population seems unable to believe that someone who lived in a city as big as Shiratorizawa, someone who’s done as much as Semi truly has done, would ever chose to move all the way out here, to the back of beyond. If he were being pedantic, Semi would point out that there are further backs, and beyonds far past this one, but he guesses they have a point. Maybe it is a little suspicious.

No matter. He knows he just wanted a change and, after ten months here, has made the quiet, safe unfamiliar his routine. He wakes up at dawn, and remains in bed until the first confirmation of sunlight through his uncurtained window. His home is plain, simple, but feels far kinder than the barracks he once lived in. Most importantly, it’s his – there’s his boots, his guitar, the warding herbs he strung up over the door. Tucked at the bottom of the cupboard, so as not to worry any guests, is his sword. Each morning, he wriggles his legs out into the room, relishing having the space and privacy to do so. Today, as always, he enjoys the defiantly joyful swing of his socked feet through the cool air.

Once he’s up, dressed, has relit the fire in his hearth and shaken off the remnants of sleep, he walks to draw water at the village’s small well, taking satisfaction in putting hand over hand and always, reliably, gaining something in return. The well gives good water, cool and clear, but something about its brickwork is off and so it slants dramatically sideways. Semi thinks it looks like it wants to take off running into the woods behind it. They’re the same woods that back onto Semi’s house, and which mark the village border. The trees are close and thick and evergreen, meaning the undergrowth below springs a permanent growth of shadows. It’s easy to get lost in there, and a fierce crop of rumours has been raised in defence, to warn from straying too far in. Maybe that’s why Semi, a fellow focus of unfounded murmurings, likes the woods so much.

As always, he gives the green shadows between the trees a long, considered look, but nothing ever moves in there, not this close to the village. There’s birdsong though, a last few soloists who didn’t get their chance to shine in the dawn chorus. Semi listens to them as he walks home around the edge of the village, along the thin, unbreached strip between the end of the houses and the start of the woods, whilst he challenges himself to kick up pine needles without spilling any water.

Back at home, he washes and breakfasts, heating up a vegetable broth. There's nothing here like the endless yellow fields he would run through as a child, populated by wheat twice his height; there’s a couple of fields, teetering on the edge of agriculture, but not at any kind of significant scale. None of the sort of fancy food he was once adjusted to either, either, delicate and served on gold plates, or at least plates that shone gold in the candle light. But there’s a big, reliable vegetable patch at the centre of the village, which produces sturdy stock that he’s learnt to like. And, two miles along the one road out of the village, there’s a bridge and a river, where Semi caught the fish he'll have for lunch. He’s content with that. Not everyone he’s known would understand, but he doesn’t have to explain himself to them anymore, so—

There’s a knock on the door. Semi glances at the window, to the position of the sun; they’re early, he thinks, but he can’t be sure, because the only way to tell time accurately out here is by marking the shadows on the village green, where a sundial has been carved through the grass. It hardly matters though; if they're here, they're here. He has nothing better to do. He has his last couple of pieces of carrot and taro and, leaving the bowl on the table, goes to open the door.

As expected, a gaggle of kids grin up at him.

“Hi, knight!” says Taku. He’s the boldest of them, and the least polite. He’s still bright and keen, though, so Semi stops himself from scowling.

“I’m not a knight,” he tells them, folding his arms across his chest. “I’m a bard, as you well know, or you wouldn’t be here. I assume you want a story?”

“Do you know about what’s happening in the north?” Ogasawara Hiroki asks, which is interesting. Hiroki hasn’t come to see Semi in the morning for a while now, not since his younger brother and his friends started tagging along. Too uncool, Semi had assumed, and thought no more about it. Now, though, something’s brought him back.

“There’s a lot of places to the north,” Semi says. He hasn’t heard anything specific, not for a while, although he can guess what has finally begun. Lately, there’s been something happening at dusk, when the air’s still warm from the day but has just been plunged into darkness, something like the spitting protests of hot steel when a smith cools it suddenly in water. At dusk, the breeze doesn’t smell of metal, but like it might, soon. It doesn't bode well. “A lot happens up there, all the time. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“No one will tell us anything!” Ogasawara Yū bursts out, earning himself a glare from his older brother. Clearly, he wasn’t supposed to admit that, maybe out of fear that doing so would make Semi clam up, too. Lucky for them, Semi loves to talk.

“It’s about the Demon King!” Riku pipes up, excitably.

Taku echoes him, “The Demon King is coming!”

Semi clicks his tongue at that, amused more than annoyed, annoyed more than surprised. “I highly doubt he’s coming here. The cabbages you grow are good, but they’re not that good.”

“Can you tell us about him, though?” Hiroki asks. “About what’s happening?”

“Hm,” Semi steps out the doorframe where he’s been lent instead of answering properly, and leads the group down towards the small circle of wooden benches that are set up at the side of his home. They're really just tree trunks, which Semi cut and dragged here by himself, back when most of the village was still unwilling to give their trust to a stranger with only a guitar, a strange explanation and a pile of coins stamped by the Shiratorizawa mint to prove he wasn’t a rogue. Now look at him, babysitting their children.

He waits for them to settle down before continuing. Hoshi Rintarou sits next to him, which is fine by Semi; he doesn’t talk much, which is how listeners should be. The rest of the kids can be terrors. He adopts his most sombre tale-telling face.

“I can’t tell you about what’s happening in the north right now. For a start, I don’t know, exactly. More importantly, there’s a lot of stories converging there, and none of them are mine. And it’s not right to tell someone else’s story whilst it’s still happening, before it’s been passed along and turned into a tale. That’s bad luck.” (Hiroki frowns; clearly Semi needs to up his game, if he's still sceptical about the power of a word dropped at the wrong time.) “I’m sure it won’t be long until those tales are being told by every bard in the land, but for now, I’ll have to tell you something from earlier.”

“About the Demon King?” Hiroki clarifies.

“In part,” Semi tells him, and Riku and Taku whoop, elbowing Yū into it too. He supposes it is just a particularly topic fairytale for them, out here where people barely unsheathe their kitchen knives. “About how he came to be who he is now. It’s not going to rhyme or anything, though. It’s not a proper tale, not yet.”

Hiroki nods at that, apparently satisfied, and Semi begins.

“Once upon a time–“

Taku groans, loudly. “No, Semi, that’s lame. ‘Once upon a time’ is bor-ring.”

“It’s an awful lot safer than ‘right now’,” Semi mutters, mostly to himself; he knows a lost cause when it calls him lame. “Alright then. Once, before you were born, Taku, but after I was, there lived a boy.”

“Did this happen when you were a knight?”

“No, it was before that. And I’ve told you before, I wasn’t really a knight, just training to be one. Anyway, this boy. He trained too, actually. His mother was very important, and could have got him a job at any city court he wanted, but his father had been a knight — not a very famous one, I don’t know any tales about him, but he was one nevertheless — and the boy had loved to hear his stories of other heroes, and wanted to be like them.”

“Are you the boy?” asks Riku.

“No,” Semi tells him. That would be a sad end, wouldn’t it? All that prestige, all those dreams, all that ability, to end up here. Semi’s not unhappy, but he’s him, and the boy— The boy is someone else, and not a boy anymore, either. Semi puts the thought away, and presses on. “Even by the time he was your age, this boy was well on his way to becoming a great knight. He worked hard, and was already growing tall and strong, and — he always got damned lucky — he was left-handed, which meant he could always surprise his opponents in hand to hand combat. Most importantly, perhaps, he lived in a great city, with great instructors and fierce opponents. Even before he began his official knight's training, he had practiced with the best. By his fourteenth year, the year training begins, his name was already known across the land. But the whole time he was working, so was another boy–“

“Ooh! Is this boy you?”

“No. I’m not in any of my tales.” (He may still appear in a few of somebody else’s, but that’s not for Semi to say.) “Now listen. This boy also wanted to be a hero. He too practiced lots, and though he always fought hard, he thought harder. The first boy was undeniably strong, but this one was undeniably clever, even when he was young, so I’ve heard. No one paid him much heed in his youth, even though he surely could have been famous then, if he had journeyed further.

“Remember how I said that the first boy was from a great city? Well, the second came from a town just a few miles away, which sat in the city’s shadow. So if people needed aid, or law, or heroes, they didn’t go to the town. They went to the city. As he grew up, the first boy became more and more renowned, as visitors noted his ability, and so he continued to be given quests and commissions and travel further and further. Meanwhile the second waited in the place where he was born for a few scant chances to prove himself, sharpening his skills as much as he could, until the whetstone was worn through.”

“Does this have one of those morals?” Taku asks sniffily. “To warn us not to go into Takahashi’s garden again, or something?”

“You asked for this story!” Semi says. “And how would that even work?”

He shrugs, but Yū suggests, looking thoughtful, “It’s kind of about staying where you’re supposed to, right? Like the second boy?”

“No,” says Semi. “It’s not. The second boy wasn’t happy where he was, and he left soon after he reached adulthood. But you don't need to know that; it's not what this tale's about. However, there are three things which you need to know. Firstly, is that they were both undeniably talented, even in their youths. I know I’ve said that already, but it’s important. Perhaps not yet the best in the land, but not far off. They could each give anyone a good fight. That kind of skill never stays dormant.

“Second, they were both monsters.”

That gets the reaction he hoped for; coos of excitement, an impressed little gasp from Yū. Rintarou, by Semi’s side shivers a little, and looks up at him with wide, eager eyes. Here, where the woods are meant to heave unseen with them, monsters feel both close and particularly strange. It’s a potent combination.

Hiroki, though, reacts with the focused disinterest of someone destined to leave. “So one of them’s the Demon King, right?”

Semi smiles. “One of them is, yes.”

“I think it’s the fancy city one!” says Riku. People here don’t much trust ostentatiousness, so Semi expected this. If he’s being honest, it’s why he included the detail. A bit of moral complexity, to remind them that this isn’t a fable. It’s barely even history. This is the dropping of a stone into water, the ripples of which are still spreading out, out, out. “The Demon King seems fancy.”

“But is he left-handed?” Hiroki asks, a little too smug at out-thinking a kid three or four years his junior. “Hm?”

“What kind of monsters are they?” Yū interrupts, looking at Semi. He’s as focused as Hiroki, but where his brother’s focus lets him ignore spooks, Yū’s is on them and them alone. It’s the fascination of the scared, Semi thinks, bard instincts kicking in; he’ll try not to loose any of his more ghoulish tales around him.

“Well,” begins Semi. “Most monsters are born, right? If your parents are oni, so are you. But that's not always true, and it's not true for these two. These two made themselves. Which makes them a little hard to identify.” He hauls in a deep breath, gives himself until he sighs it out before he continues. “When you're so focused on one goal, you forget what exists outside of it. You can drift, slowly, away from the realm we live in, where we can talk, and ask about each other’s day, and see each other eye-to-eye. Human things don’t matter so much to you anymore. And if you don’t care about humanity, that leaves you with one choice – being a monster.

“That doesn’t make you bad. It doesn’t even mean you can’t hold a good conversation. But you never really make eye-contact with a mortal again. You’re always looking just over their shoulder, towards the horizon.” He shakes his head, like a dog out of water, ridding himself of something. “Or at least that’s how it feels. I only have the mortal perspective.”

Semi smiles up at the kids, not wanting to scare them. They’re quiet, curious. He’ll carry on, then. “Then, when your thoughts get completely abstracted from your body, your body shifts to accommodate. The constant training probably helped with that, too. So. One of them gained the strength of thirty men in one arm, the other grew horns.”

“Oh! Oh oh oh!” Taku is hopping around on the bench. “I know who has that! The strength of thirty men.”

Semi, quick, with the same instinct he’d once have used to parry the thrust of a sword, shushes him. “Don’t say his name. It’s bad luck to tie someone down within one tale, when they’re still writing their own story elsewhere.” It’s true, too, even if it’s more superstitious than Semi usually bothers with.

“Wait,” says Hiroki. “If monstrosity’s only the second thing you want to tell us, what’s the third?”

“Ah,” Semi says, smiling a thin, knowing storyteller smile. He's reached out and found the rhythm of the story now, to turn it from an anecdote to a tale. “You’re listening. Well then, the third is that once, they knew each other.”

* * *

The training ground is like any other on a novice sword-fighting tournament day: dusty, directly in the sun, full of pale-faced teenaged hopefuls clutching rapiers. (Semi assumes, anyway. He wasn’t there, or if he was — and there’s a chance of that, he admits — nothing really happened to make it stand out from any of the other dusty, sun-baked tournaments he attended. This is not a stop in his story, only a town he may or may not have passed through on his journey elsewhere. For the tale's subjects, though, it’s a glittering citadel, perhaps even the place their first swords were forged.)

Wakatoshi is neither pale-faced nor hopeful — he hardly needs hope when he’s got confidence, yet to lose as he is, at least at a local tournament like this one — although he is teenaged. To those hoping to best him today, this is his one concession to fallibility, their one hope. He may be halfway to legend already, but he is young, the same age as them. He can’t be that much better.

Only, he is. By noon, Wakatoshi has won all his matches with ease. No one comes close to unarming him, let alone knocking him to the ground, which marks the final point in novice tournaments. From the edges of the training ground, bitter mutterings float up alongside the dust, curling smoke-like from the heat of frustration. (Semi remembers this well from tournaments back then, and probably participated too, brat that he was. Ah, who's he kidding? He definitely did.)

As for Wakatoshi, he stands at the centre of the tournament ground, right in the crucible, blank faced and impassive and ready for the next fight. He doesn’t show it, but he’s a little disappointed. He’s heard the whispers, although he’s dense enough that they mostly only reach him when they’re translated into shouts by a disappointed loser, hauling themselves up from the ground. Still, he knows people want to beat him. He was hoping for more of a fight.

Today’s strange, though. As the midday sun begins to warp the air, turning the brown earth into rolling water, the whispers change too. It took a while to become clear, because people weren’t expecting, but Wakatoshi isn’t the only undefeated competitor. There’s someone else. Of course, he hasn’t fought against Wakatoshi yet, but until that happens, this boy could win, and wouldn’t that be satisfying. The frustration gains a red-hopeful edge.

Someone knows someone who knows him, and a spool unravels, a tapestry stitches itself. The boy at the centre of it, Oikawa Tōru, isn’t new to tournaments, but thus far he’s only ever entered fencing events, which are more rule-driven and less useful than thensword-fighting he's doing today. You can tell that’s how he’s trained: his movements are textbook and almost chivalrous, as fencing encourages. But they’re also smartly used, and his reflexes are quick enough to deploy attacks relentlessly. This is in stark contrast to Wakatoshi, who simply will not yield.

And next, it becomes known. They are fighting after lunch.

Over the meal, stitches are made, deft and sure in purple and blue, and a picture forms against the fabric of the day. Oikawa is the underdog, of course, but that only makes people more sure of his victory. The place he comes from is small, doesn’t even have a full party of knights, so he’s mostly taught himself, a lone figure slicing at air. Not like Wakatoshi (although they call him Ushiwaka still, of course) who, although still a novice and not yet in training to be a knight, has access to all the resources of Shiratorizawa’s barracks. A new rumour, which first gets unfolded around when this tournament takes place, is that the city are looking to create a party for him already; they’re planning to pick out the best novices and train them up to cover for Wakatoshi's weaknesses and magnify his strengths. Oikawa has none of that, but that means he has to cover his own weaknesses. He can’t allow them in the first place.

The story is already half-written before the two have even started warming up. (Semi can only vouch for a little of it. He doesn’t think Oikawa trained himself, and knows he wasn’t always alone. He’s not even sure why anyone thought that. Oikawa turned up to tournaments with a little brigade from his town all the time; Semi used to speak to them on occasion. It is true, though, that the weight of expectations was always on Wakatoshi's shoulders – maybe that’s why he ended up so strong, ha ha. It’s also true about the party of novices. Semi can vouch for that, most of all.

He can’t vouch for what follows, but he’s a storyteller. A tale isn’t about what happened, it’s about what’s true.)

And what follows is that two boys fight and, as all stories must, the fight ends. Wakatoshi looks down at Oikawa. You wouldn’t be able to tell, he’s as impassive as ever, but there’s a wildness sprung among his emotions. There is a wildness in Oikawa too, but that’s obvious: his face is all feeling, shattered into the kind of hatred that feels endless, like it will take a lifetime to repair. Around them, people are applauding, talking, muttering some more, but they remain silent and still. Forever they’ll be weaved into the landscape here, at least in words. One standing, one sprawled. One arm extended between them.

Neither of them are monsters yet, mind. They’re on their way to it, though, and they recognise the other. Eyes meet eyes. From above, Wakatoshi sees _kin_. Below him, Oikawa thinks _kill_. Maybe the horns had already started to grow, even then. Perhaps it was then that they began to.

It’s Wakatoshi who's reached out, of course, and has offered Oikawa his hand. Oikawa at first ignores it, and then rips through the stillness, by pushing it away and clambering to his feet, ungainly in his anger. He is the one to walk away. For the first and final time, Wakatoshi follows.

“You fought well,” Wakatoshi tells him. “You have great skill.”

Oikawa says “I know,” or “Not enough,” or else he snarls a curse. Whatever. He does not take the praise, not in the way Wakatoshi hopes, which is with gentle hands and understanding.

Wakatoshi tries again. Oikawa has quickened his pace, and Wakatoshi’s breath is still caught up from the fight; he speaks fast and without the usual measured consideration, just to get it all out. He’s still young, in this moment. “I had never heard of you before today, but I should have done. It seems clear that you cannot stay where you are and hope to fulfil the potential you so clearly have. You should join me. We can train, together, and you will get what you deserve.”

Oikawa stops, then. They’ve walked off the training ground by then, onto the grass that borders it. Oikawa trained on grass, probably. Wakatoshi learnt on the cobbles of stone courtyards and specially laid dirt. “What is it that I deserve, do you think? A place by your side?”

Wakatoshi corrects him. “A place in my party.

“Oh,” says Oikawa. The anger, supressed for a moment, reforms his face again. He learns to control that, later, to channel it into levity or disgust or mockery, but until then, he brandishes it at Wakatoshi. “I see. You want me to help you get better. To use my skills for your betterment—”

“No,” Wakatoshi corrects again. “I should have clarified. I don’t need your help; you lost, after all, and there are others who can perform the duties you would well enough, I am sure. But you are talented. I want to help you.” The diplomat’s instinct for precision, inherited from his mother, kicks in. “I am offering you my help.”

Oikawa smiles then. There’s a glint to it, like the rust shine of a blade drawn beneath a blood red sky. This is the first time he’ll wield it, and it sticks a little in the scabbard, isn’t as perfectly cruel as it will become, but it’s still a warning. A threat, a moment away from becoming a violence. “And I’m rejecting it,” he says.

And then he says “I’ll prove myself without you,” or “Your self-confidence is ridiculous, and I’m going to see it crumble,” or “This isn’t going to be the last time we’ll fight. Nothing is decided here. Nothing ends now, it only begins.” He issues a challenge, some challenge, and the tapestry is complete, all the loose threads sliced short and tied off. They are opponents forever.

* * *

This is the tale Semi tells, more or less. Mostly less. He keeps his embellishments to a minimum, cuts out the more personal details. He doesn’t include names. But the story — the fight, the offer, the rejection — are laid out, in this quiet village, miles and miles and years and years away. Normally he’d end a tale with a flourish, a strum of his guitar, but instead he just smiles more sadly than he means to. “That was how the Demon King and the Miracle Knight met.”

“The Miracle Knight?” Taku asks, screwing up his nose. “I thought you were talking about the Eagle Prince.”

That makes Semi laugh, breaking him out of the slight haze he enters sometimes, whilst storytelling. “Oh, it’s the same guy. I forgot he got called that around here. He's ended up with more nicknames in half a lifetime than most heroes get in centuries, huh. He’s not actually a prince, though, so I’m going to stick with Miracle Knight.”

“Sounds like the Demon King isn’t a king, either, if he’s from nowhere important,” Hiroki points out.

“Oh, he’s not,” Semi agrees. “He’s dramatic and egotistical enough though, so lucky for him, the nickname stuck.”

“Do you know them? Because Semi,” Hiroki looks at him with serious eyes. The north isn't so far away. “It really sounds like you know them.”

Semi looks back. “Before I turned it into a tale, I had to get the story from somewhere, didn’t I?”

Which feels like an ending, except Semi isn't part of a tale, or even a story, anymore. Loose threads abound. The morning carries on as they sit in the circle of benches, their shadows shortening, their hands warming just slightly beneath the pale winter sun. Yū, inspired by the knowing of a hero, begins telling Semi about a wannabe knight who'd stumbled into the village a couple of years ago, although Hiroki provides most of the detail. Riku and Taku join in too, waving their hands to illustrate all the various ways he'd fallen and failed, and even Rintarou nods along. Semi, who has known a hundred not-very-good knights in training, nods along indulgently, at least until they mention his name.

"Oh," he says. "Wait. He was short, you say? Was he red-headed too?" Yes, yes he was. Semi raises an eyebrow at them. "Well, you might just have a tale of your own there, or at least a fragment of one. I happen to be in possession of another—" They erupt in chatter, bold-eyed, keen-hearted, excited to be entangled in something. "Which I can tell you tomorrow."

That disappoints them, but it is a certainty that tomorrow will arrive, soon, and with that logic Semi shoos them off. They scatter into the afternoon, towards their stick duels and pretend games of knights and kings. Semi settles back, to consider how to spin the most unexpected loss he's ever been part of into poetry, when he realises that Hiroki is still waiting.

"You didn't explain what's happening in the north," he tells Semi. He sounds less cross than earlier, which is good; Hiroki's normally amiable, but the frustration of exclusion is mighty, Semi knows.

"You’re right," Semi agrees. "I didn’t. Because I don't know."

"Yes, I was listening. But there must be something you can do about that. You can't know the beginning, and not the end."

"I'm not sure what I told you was the beginning. Or at least, if it was, it wasn't the only one. And far from the most important." He doesn't mention that Hiroki himself may have a hold of that already, with his red-head village hero.

"Right, right," Hiroki sounds cynical. "But there's only one end, yeah? The one that's happening, right now. A couple of days' ride away, that's what I overheard. So you could get there in time for any battle, I think."

"I'm not a knight."

Hiroki actually rolls his eyes. He's become more of a brat in the last couple of months, apparently. It's a little endearing. "I know. You're a bard, right? So, shouldn't you be gathering stories? Shouldn't you be watching?"

Semi folds his arms then, and frowns. Before him, future stretches endless (although not without an end), and the path through it is flecked with resting places, like points of light. "Perhaps," he begins, taking his first step forwards in ten months.

**Author's Note:**

> so this is a lot of things (way longer than i expected, soundtracked entirely by medieval remixes of pop songs, entirely a result of the fact i've read as many fantasy novels in the past three months as in the previous three years), but it's mostly a kind of teaser for an au i'm probably not going to write, but would really like to. i'm noting that here so it's noted somewhere, and i can use that fact to put some kind of pressure on myself to maybe, one day, write it. we'll see.


End file.
